Carson McCullers

Fiction 2046/ 161 pages

The Member of the Wedding tells the story of Frankie Addams, a lonely twelve-year-old girl in a small Southern town, who becomes obsessed with her older brother's upcoming wedding as a way to escape her loneliness and isolation. The novel explores themes of adolescence, identity, and belonging through Frankie's interactions with her family's cook, Berenice, and her six-year-old cousin, John Henry.

It is a story about moving from childhood and into adolescence through a summer of being afraid, when she was twelve, and a long weekend (the wedding weekend) of being fixated on the wedding.  Frankie, who by this point in the book has renamed herself F. Jasmine, creates a dream,  a desire to move away, to travel and be on her own.  She is attempting not only to curb her isolation but also is beginning to think about creating purpose and meaning in her life.   She wants to become part of something bigger than herself. She imagines herself as part of the wedding party and even contemplates joining the honeymoon. A confusing time for any young person.

The book also addresses race through the strong relationship she has with their Black cook, Berenice.

This book is one of the GoodReads books of the year, 1946.  I would call it a sweet read, but nothing you should feel compelled to pick up.  My criticism would be that the author is clearly an adult, and writes like an adult woman, and though the character of Frankie/ F. Jasmine is interesting and complex, I don't have a sense the author was actually able to represent and portray being twelve.

August 2025